


Dreams We Can't Shake

by bluesuedeshoes



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 04:48:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5954179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesuedeshoes/pseuds/bluesuedeshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt:  Caitlin is the one who have nightmares about Zoom killing Barry and once where there only she and Barry are in Star Labs she fall asleep and start screaming in her dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams We Can't Shake

Sleepless nights were becoming almost normal for Barry these days. Since his battle with Zoom, the humiliating defeat, he was plagued with insomnia. What was not normal was finding himself at Star Labs at 2:00 in the morning.

Unable to stand tossing and turning anymore, he’d found himself donning a pair of jeans and running aimlessly in the night, suddenly finding himself at Star Labs, almost as if his legs had known where he was going before the rest of him had a chance to catch up. He’d been surprised, that first night, to find Caitlin slumped over her keyboard, fast asleep. By the second and then third time he found her there, evidently having passed out in the middle of one project or another, Barry realized that it shouldn’t have surprised him at all.

Each time, he found that instead of waking her, he tread lightly around her, her unconscious presence strangely comforting as he busied himself with research and tests, even occasionally taking on the treadmill or some of Cisco’s battle droids in other rooms so as not to disturb her.

It was as he was bent over a microscope, studying some slides from the police station—work that he had unofficially taken home with him—that he heard her start to mutter. He lifted his head, startled at first, thinking Caitlin had woken up for a second. But then he let out a breathy laugh when he saw her, still curled up in her desk chair, her computer long since fallen into sleep mode and no longer lighting her face with that soft blue glow. She muttered again and he couldn’t help grinning. Who knew Dr. Snow talked in her sleep.

He started to ben over his microscope again when she made a louder noise, this one of distress, and his head shot up again. Her body was quaking and her face and a look of anxiety etched across it.

At her side in a blink, he started to reach for her shoulder to wake her but then hesitated, not knowing whether his presence would be welcome. But when she cried out again in her sleep and her leg kicked in reflex, he forgot his qualms and gently touched her shoulder.

“Caitlin,” he whispered. In a second her eyes shot open and she jumped in shock at the sight of him, her heart pounding in her chest.

“Barry! Wh—what’re you—what are you doing here?” she asked, looking around and taking in her surroundings, letting her nightmare slip away as reality and memory sunk in.

He shrugged sheepishly. “Couldn’t sleep. Ended up coming here to get some work done. Same as you, I take it,” he nodded toward the computer she’d fallen asleep in front of this time. He didn’t mention that it wasn’t the first time he’d found her here.

“I—um,” she tried to straighten her blouse, her hand reaching automatically to determine the state of her hair. “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep either.”

He looked at her expectantly, clearly waiting for more. When she didn’t offer it, he pressed. “Are you all right? Sounded like a pretty bad dream.”

Her eyes darted away and she inhaled. “Yeah, not the best. I’ve been having a lot of them lately.”

He sighed, sitting on the desk in front of her, next to her keyboard. “Yeah, I hear that. What was it about?” he asked sympathetically.

She looked at him. “You. And Zoom. Seeing him hold your body in front of us. At first I couldn’t even tell—” she sucked in a breath before letting it out slowly, steadying herself. “I wasn’t sure if you were even alive until he paralyzed you and you yelled. In my dream, you were dead.”

He looked at her guiltily, sorry that his lost battles were affecting her as powerfully as they had him. “I wish I could take that memory away. Zoom messed with my head, too. I’ve had dreams about him attacking everyone from Joe and Iris to a kid who traded sandwiches with me at lunch in the fourth grade.”

Caitlin couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped her and Barry smiled in return.

“Is that when this started?” he asked, gesturing around him. “I assume this isn’t the first time you’ve slept here.” Again, he spared her the embarrassment of knowing that he’d seen her at least half a dozen times now.

But he was surprised when she shook her head. “No. I’ve been coming here at night for months.”

He frowned.

“Ronnie,” she said by way of explanation.

“Ah.”

Caitlin couldn’t quite meet his eyes, and instead appeared fascinated by a speck on the desk in front of her, long lashes turned down. “The first time I thought he died, it felt like all the sunshine had gone out of my life. This time…I literally had dreams that I was freezing, like ice was crystallizing in the center of my heart and slowly taking over the rest of me, until I turned blue and frostbitten. I froze in the absence of his warmth.” She forced a laugh even as Barry felt a pang in his chest, wanting to reach out to her. “I’m sorry. I sound so melodramatic. It’s not like I’m the first person to ever lose someone.”

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her hand and her attention. Their eyes met and he saw tears in them, though she was stubbornly trying to blink them away. “You’re allowed to be sad about it. Trying not to be sad is only going to make it harder on you. You get to grieve. Don’t ever think that you aren’t allowed that.”

She smiled a watery smile. “Thanks, Barry,” she squeezed his hand in return, and Barry was struck by how small but strong her hands were. So capable, so sure of herself, but really she was just as fragile as the rest of them. He squeezed her hand back.

“Why don’t I give you a ride home?” he suggested. “And if you have another nightmare you can call me and I’ll come by so we can talk about it. It won’t seem that bad afterward.”

“Only if you promise to do the same.”


End file.
